A blog about Thomas Witlam Atkinson and Lucy Atkinson, the 19th century explorers of Siberia and Central Asia

A film about the tragic history of Kapal in Eastern Kazakhstan

I have come across a wonderful film about Bolat Khan, a resident of Kapal in Eastern Kazakhstan – the town lying in the shadow of the Djungar Alatau mountains in which Thomas and Lucy Atkinson spent almost a year in 1848-9 and where their son, Alatau Tamchiboulac Atkinson was born.

Bolat Khan

The film tells the fascinating story of a local farmer and hunter, Bolat Khan, how his parents were killed by Stalin’s secret police during the purges and about his own career as the director of collective farms in the Kapal-Arasan region during the Soviet period. It shows that there is a darker history to this region that only now is beginning to surface. You can find the film here.

The film was written, filmed, edited, programmed and compiled in SMX, PHP, Java and Flash by Mitch Collins and translated and adapted to Russian and Kazakh by Lena Leneshmidt of Almaty, Kazakhstan.